Games utilizing playing cards are popular throughout the world. Many people get hours of enjoyment and relaxation from playing cards. In certain parts of the world, wagering adds an additional dimension of excitement to the game. Whether in "card room" games where the players play against each other or in a traditional "casino" game environment where an employee of the house acts as a banker, wagering adds excitement to many forms of card games.
Players involved in card games with wagering often enjoy new games with relatively simple rules that can readily be learned by a beginner or casual player.
Typical card games involve a dealer providing a plurality of cards to each player. Each player then gathers the cards and tries to form the best possible hand according to some pre-determined hierarchy of hand values. For example, a standard poker hierarchy is, in descending order, Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Straight, Three of a Kind, Two Pair, One Pair, and High Card. In some games, players are permitted to discard certain cards and receive new cards in an effort to form a better hand.
It is also common to designate one or more cards as "wild" cards which can have any one of a predetermined number of values at the option of the player(s) receiving such wild cards. In this manner, the designation of wild cards within a deck can significantly increase the chances of a player attaining a particular hand. In known games which utilize wild cards, players must use the wild card in the hand in which the wild card is received. Therefore, if a player has a card hand of low or no value, the wild card may not be sufficient to allow that player to form a winning hand. For example, if the payout schedule for a given game starts at a pair of jacks, and the player has the following hand: 2, 4, 5, 10 of different suits and a wild card, the best poker hand that the player could form with one wild card would be a pair of 10's. This hand would not qualify for a winning payout.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a card game which increases the players' excitement and enjoyment, as well as the level of player participation by providing a player with an opportunity to maximize the impact of receiving a wild card.
It is also desirable to provide wagering games other than cards with an exciting, new feature which comprises a wild indicia and novel methods of using that wild indicia.
It is also desirable to provide novel games readily adaptable to wagering which are relatively simple to learn for new players.
It is also desirable to provide games which provide one or more players with opportunities to modify the player's winning payout by using such a wild indicia, received during one play, with a subsequent play.